Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917 examines Matisse's production from his return to Paris from Morocco in 1913 to his departure for Nice in 1917, which comprises a major turning point in the artist's career. Over these five years, he developed experimental, and enigmatic works: paintings that are abstracted and rigorously purged of descriptive detail, geometric and sharply composed, and dominated by blacks and grays. Previously considered mainly as responses to Cubism or World War I, works from this period are reassessed and presented in this exhibition. Matisse himself acknowledged near the end of his life the significance of this period when he identified two worksBathers by a River (190910, 1913, 191617) and The Moroccans (191516)as among his most "pivotal."